"Rafter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... They've got Jock Merritt up on the carpet and they haven't decided yet whether to hang him to a rafter or boil him in oil. Some of 'em think he pulled Elisha to-day. Merritt is giving 'em a powerful argument. Says he never rode a harder finish in his life, but that the horse took a sudden notion to quit and did it. Didn't seem to be ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... this time," responded the journeyman. The old gentleman did not repeat his question; he held fast to the rafter on which he was leaning. "He was already on his way home," continued the journeyman. "I came with him as far as the gate. Then he sent me to the tinner's to see if the tin was ready at last. Joerg told me that he had already brought it to the house and had just come from the roof of St. George's ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... invisible but heavy cloak of somnolence. They had entered languidly but politely into his plans. The storekeeper had gladly parted with one-third of the comestible stock which was slowly petrifying on shelf and rafter; a little burro, grazing on the dump, had been transformed into a pack-animal; and after standing treat three times around, Charles-Norton, leading by a rope his fuzzy four-footed companion, to a great flapping of amicable sombreros had taken the trail winding ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... order to pierce wood and to bore its galleries in an old rafter, employs "the same utensils which in others are transformed into picks and mattocks to attack clay and gravel, and it is only a predisposition of talent that holds ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... above him, a rafter here and there was gaping open, and fiery monsters, with blood-red eyes, were peeping down at him and puffing clouds of blue smoke through the interstices. Thousands and thousands of voices were bickering and chattering with each other, ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the body o' the big pack t' the sou'east. In the nor'west, too, was another floe. 'Twas there, in the mist, an' 'twas comin' down with the wind. It cotched the first of the gale; 'twas free t' move, too. 'Twould overhaul us soon enough. Ever see the ice rafter, sir? No? Well, 'tis no swift collison. 'Tis horrible an' slow. No shock at all: jus' slow pressure. The big pans rear. They break—an' tumble back. Fields—acres big—slip one atop o' the other. Hummocks are crunched t' slush. The big bergs topple over. It always makes ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... to Sunnydale, Amid the lure of laughter. Oh, how can we unhappy be Beneath its leafy rafter! Each perfect hour is like a flower, Each day is like a posy. How can you say the skies are grey? You're ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... rasher of bacon from a hook on a rafter, and with his big pocket-knife deftly cut some thin slices into a frying-pan on the smoky stove, and into the hot grease he broke some fresh eggs which he had purloined from a hen's nest in the stable-loft. He had a loaf ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... up at the forest roof. They could hear a baying of hounds in the far valley. Down the dingle near them a dead leaf was drumming on a bough—a clock of the wood telling the flight of seconds. Above, they could hear the low creak of brace and rafter and great waves of the upper deep sweeping over and breaking with a loud wash on reefs of evergreen. The little people of this odd winter land had begun to make roads from tree to tree and from thicket to thicket. ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... spoke when, fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose every beam and rafter; The heavy wall climbed slowly after. The chimney widened and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below; In vain, for a superior force, Applied at bottom, stops ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... stayed all night in a ruined town With a rafter for a bed? With horses stamping underneath In the morning when they are fed? Have you heard the crump-crump whistle? Do you know the dud shell's grunt? Have you played rat in a dugout?— Then you ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before—if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... haughtily. "Procure me my crown." Suzanna looked about her. An old dried-up Christmas wreath hanging on a rafter attracted her attention. Quickly she procured it and held it out to Drusilla. "Here is your crown, Queen," she said. And then, her voice changing, she said: "You'd better let me put it on, Drusilla, it's liable to crumble if you're not ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... easily, for now you may use a rafter for the fulcrum of your iron lever and pry where the long nails grip the oak too tenaciously, and it is not long before you have the roof unboarded. And here you may have a surprise and be taught a lesson in wariness which you will need if you would survive ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... these duties were not easy nor expeditious work, nor did all the work begin in the still-room. Faithfully did dames and maids gather in field and garden, from early spring to chilly autumn, precious stores for their stills and limbecks. In every garret, from every rafter, slowly swayed great susurrous bunches of withered herbs and simples awaiting expression and distillation, and dreaming perhaps of the summer breezes that had blown through them in the sunny days of their youth in their meadow homes. In many an old garret now bare of such ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... Then he began to drag posts, pieces of rafter and other wreckage over to the cave. He laid the longest pieces sloping against the cave-mouth—he badly wanted his father to be within four walls,—covered them over and filled the gaps with bits of sail-cloth and anything ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... was a little boy wouldn't say his prayers, An' when he went to bed at night, away upstairs, His Mammy heered him holler, an' his daddy heered him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby-hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly-flue, an' ever'wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout, An' the gobble-uns'll git you—Ef you Don't ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... lacking courage to advance; for beneath, the wreathed smoke and dim hot fume of the consuming fire told him of certain death; unable to retreat,—for the insidious flame had already destroyed the door which Roupall had failed to move, and danced, like a fiend at play with destruction, from rafter to rafter, and beam to beam, of the ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... that of one house there was left standing only a breadth of front wall between the places where windows had been. It rose in a ragged column to the line of the roof-rafters—only, of course, there was neither roof nor rafter now. On the face of the column, as though done in a spirit of bitter irony, was posted a proclamation, signed by the burgomaster and the military commandant, calling on the vanished dwellers of this place to ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... song ye may learn the nest," Said Yniol; "enter quickly." Entering then, Right o'er a mount of newly-fallen stones, The dusky-rafter'd many-cobweb'd hall, He found an ancient dame in dim brocade; And near her, like a blossom vermeil-white,[2] That lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath, Moved the fair Enid, all in faded silk, Her daughter. In a moment thought Geraint, "Here by God's rood is the one ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... was a little boy wouldn't say his pray'rs— An' when he went to bed at night, away up-stairs, His mammy heerd him holler, an' his daddy heerd him bawl, An' when they turn't the kivvers down, he wasn't there at all! An' they seeked him in the rafter-room, an' cubby hole, an' press, An' seeked him up the chimbly flue, an' ever'-wheres, I guess; But all they ever found was thist his pants an' roundabout! An' the Gobble-uns'll git you Ef you ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... almost before any hen had time to look round or think, behold! mice were squeaking in every corner, and there were holes behind every wainscot, plank, and rafter. ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... sceptres starred his breast. All gleamed compact and green with scale on scale, But special burnishment adorned his mail And special terror weighed upon his frown; 20 His punier brethren quaked before his tail, Broad as a rafter, potent as a flail. So he grew lord and master of his kin: But who shall tell the tale of all their woes? An execrable appetite arose, He battened on them, crunched, and sucked them in. He knew no law, he feared no binding law, But ground them with inexorable jaw: The luscious ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... you have never been in so strong a position to make a stand. We have got all the larger contracts out of the way. Foreseeing what was likely to come, I have lately fought shy of taking new ones. Here are heavy orders from Rafter & Son, the Builders' Company, and others. We must decline them by ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... he was married he dropped that. But I've heard mother say that he took great pride in the hut when he brought her to it first, and said it was the best-built hut within fifty miles. He split every slab, cut every post and wallplate and rafter himself, with a man to help him at odd times; and after the frame was up, and the bark on the roof, he camped underneath and finished every bit of it—chimney, flooring, doors, windows, and partitions—by himself. ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... song and laughter. The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel and rafter With lightsome green of ivy and holly: Through the deep gulf of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a locust shrills the imprisoned sap, Hunted to death in its galleries ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... saloon never allowed the place to be cleaned, and for years the spiders held undisputed possession, weaving their webs without fear of molestation, until every nook and corner was filled with their tapestry, and from ceiling and rafter hung long festoons of gossamer threads that swayed back and forth in the breeze. It was a place much visited by tourists, and a trip to San Francisco was not considered complete without visiting this "Cobweb Museum," a name bestowed upon it by its ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... every bone of him broken. Next night Grettir sat up to watch; and when a third of the night was past, he heard a terrible din as of one riding the roof, and driving his heels against the thatch so that every rafter cracked again. He went to the door, and saw Glam, whose head, as it appeared to him, was monstrously big. Glam came slowly in and took hold of a bundle lying on the seat, but Grettir planted his foot against a beam, seized the bundle also, and pulled against Glam with such ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... gate, and went straight to the porch; all the woodwork of which was carved and gaily painted, and so were eaves and rafter ends ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... the yard; whereon I wept in my dream till all my maids gathered round me, so piteously was I grieving because the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back again, and perching on a projecting rafter spoke to me with human voice, and told me to leave off crying. 'Be of good courage,' he said, 'daughter of Icarius; this is no dream, but a vision of good omen that shall surely come to pass. The geese are ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... quite monstrous, and fantastic with their skirts and hair and their shadows on the wall. Before Frosted Moses had said that sentence about Courage, Peter had been taking the room in. Because he had been there very often before he knew every flagstone in the floor and every rafter in the roof and all the sporting pictures on the walls, and the long shining row of mugs and coloured plates by the fire-place and the cured hams hanging from the ceiling ... but to-night was Christmas Eve and a very especial occasion, and ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... wind would redden, and my long, lean hands and arms, that offended my sense of beauty constantly, as I dwelt on their hopelessly angular turns. I had one beauty; so my little paper-framed glass, that rested on the rough rafter that edged the sloping roof of my garret, told me, whenever I took it down to gaze in it, which, but for that beauty, would have been but seldom. It was a finely cut and firmly set mouth and chin. There was, and I felt it, beauty and character in the curves of the lips, in the rounding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... corner by the door. Rifle and pack were both gone. He looked up at the rafter where his slab of bacon was always hung. It, ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... all was quiet on the Island of Montreal. At the end of the evening's conversation, that necessary complement of every well-filled day, the men had hung their pipes, the faithful comrades of their labour, to a rafter of the ceiling; the women had put away their knitting or pushed aside in a corner their indefatigable spinning-wheel, and all had hastened to seek in sleep new strength for the labour of the morrow. Outside, the elements were unchained, ...
— The Makers of Canada: Bishop Laval • A. Leblond de Brumath
... into the loft revealed, to the boy's surprise and wonder, a coil of rope. He examined this, and found a stout clasp-hook at one end. The other end of the rope was made fast to a rafter. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... of rice, bananas, and sweet potatoes. There was no furniture in either, except matted platforms for sleeping upon, a few coarse pipkins, a red earthen-ware pitcher or two, and some calabashes. On the wall of one was a crucifix, and on a rafter in the other a wooden carving of a jolly-looking man, mallet in hand, seated on rice bags, intended for Daikoku, the Japanese God of Wealth. The people were quite unwashed, but the draught of the river carried off the bad smells which ought to have been there, and, fortunately, ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... taken the candle down from the rafter, and she went swiftly to the tiny window. She raised her hand, once, then pinched out ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... phoebe; pewit, phoebe, they contentedly but rather monotonously sing as they investigate all the sites in the neighborhood. Presently a location is chosen under a beam or rafter, and the work of collecting moss and mud for the foundation and hair and feathers or wool to line the exquisite little home begins. But the labor is done cheerfully, with many a sally in midair either to let off superfluous high spirits or to catch a morsel on the wing, and with many a vivacious ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... upon the rafter of the roof by which he hung, and his long, slender, naked body, bare but for his waist-cloth, dropped as a great snake might drop between Jack and his father. Mr. Haydon made one clutch, and closed his fingers in a tremendous throttling grip ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... later the hurricane struck the cabin with such force that every plank, rafter, beam, and log was first dislocated and then caught up in the whirlwind and scattered over the forest in the wake of the storm. As the roar of the blast died away the rain commenced pouring in torrents accompanied by vivid flashes of lightning and ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... expedition, climbed up first, Paul handing him the rope. He soon reached a rafter, and lowering the rope until he knew that it touched the ground, he fastened it securely, and at once descended, followed by Paul. They had dropped into their own bedroom, which they had given up to Hector; after feeling about, however, they decided he was not there. ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... it, too, and sat bolt upright in bed, not knowing what had awakened her, but trembling like a leaf with nervous fear. A terrific gust of wind roared around the corner, shaking the little brown house from rafter to foundation; the great elm trees tossed and groaned in sympathy, and the leafless vines over the porch beat a ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... I dare not follow after Too close. I try to keep in sight, Dreading his frown and worse his laughter, I steal out of the wood to light; I see the swift shoot from the rafter By the window: ere I alight I wait and hear the starlings wheeze And nibble like ducks: I wait his flight. He goes: I follow: no release Until he ceases. ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... his blanket to a nail away up in the topmost rafter of the cabin, and here he left ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... insurrectos against the troops of Diaz, while they themselves were supposed to be more of the same brand. Evidently they had been expected by Ramon's subterranean river, and in taking the boat they must have forestalled the real Con Divver, Jim Hickey, and Ted Rafter. Jack caught himself wondering how long it would take the latter to ride over the mountains and discover ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... my wife and children praying, although I could not see them. I did not pray. They were taken and I was left for some purpose, I suppose. My house finally landed up against the stone railway bridge. I was then pinned down to the floor by a heavy rafter or something. Somehow or other I was lifted from the floor and thrown almost out upon the bridge. Then some people got hold of me and pulled me out and took me over to a brickyard. My eyes and nose were ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... hand in the household is busily toiling, And hither and thither boys bustle and girls; Whilst, up from the hearth-fires careering and coiling, The smoke round the rafter-beams languidly curls. Let the joys of the revel be parted between us! 'Tis the Ides of young April, the day which divides The month, dearest Phyllis, of ocean-sprung Venus, A day to me dearer than ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... My mammy, she been drown right down dere in de Pee Dee river, fore I get big enough to make motion en talk what I know. Dat how-come it be dat Pa Cudjo raise me. You see, Pa Cudjo, he been work down to de swamp a heap of de time en been run boat en rafter up en down dat river all bout dere. Ma, she get word, one day, she better come cross de river to de Sand Hills to see bout grandmammy cause she been took down wid de fever en was bad off. Pa Cudjo tell her de river been mighty high, but dat he would risk to take us. Say, Ma, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... was brought, Long Bill Haskell, Fat Olsen, and the craps-player, with much awkwardness and angry haste, got the slip-noose around the Indian's neck and rove the rope over a rafter. At the other end of the dangling thing a dozen men tailed on, ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... writing this in an old Flemish farmhouse, and the room I'm sitting in has a carved rafter ceiling, red brick floor and nasty purple cabbage wallpaper. All the men of the house with the exception of the old man are at the war; one son has already died. The Germans have been through here. ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... Clever as Gum was, he was scarcely a match for two men, who, as noted horse-thieves, were experts in the use of the lasso, and in a short time the monkey was ignominiously driven from his perch on a rafter, tied up in Donald's pillow-case, and swung over the shoulder of one of the men. Then the robbers wished Donald a grim good-night, and marched off with their 'purse.' As they were going out of the door ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... of the room. Backless benches were on both sides of every table. At the end, chairs were placed, the seats of honor for famous Bourgeois. British flags had been draped across windows and colored bunting hung from rafter ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... when they met; assumed an injured air, when some of her neighbors passed her; and said, "I told you so," a dozen times a day to her husband, who got so many curtain lectures that he took to sleeping on the highest rafter, pretending that the children's noise ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... beam my life, my awl to me!" He cried, his flame addressing— "If I 'adze such a love as yours, I'd ask no other blessing!" "I am rejoist to hear you speak," The maiden said with laughter— "For tho' I hammer guileless girl, It's plane what you are rafter. Now if file love you just a bit, What further can you ax me? Can—will you be content with that, Or will you further tacks me?" He looked handsaw her words were square— "No rival can displace me— Yes, one more favor I implore, And that is, ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master's gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre—"Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!" quo' she. "A soldier is the lad for me; Hey and ...
— Fairies and Fusiliers • Robert Graves
... my deeds, And thou shalt own Mentor Alcimides 270 A valiant friend, and mindful of thy love. She spake; nor made she victory as yet Entire his own, proving the valour, first, Both of the sire and of his glorious son, But, springing in a swallow's form aloft, Perch'd on a rafter of the splendid roof. Then, Agelaues animated loud The suitors, whom Eurynomus also roused, Amphimedon, and Demoptolemus, And Polyctorides, Pisander named, 280 And Polybus the brave; for noblest far Of all the suitor-chiefs who now survived And fought for life were these. The bow had quell'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... feebly protested that he could not discharge them. Thereon Ramani Babu ordered him to be hung up. Forthwith, a dozen eager hands were laid on him, a rope was passed under his armpits, and the free end thrown over a rafter of the office. By this means he was hauled from the ground and swung suspended, a butt of sarcasm and abuse for Ramani Babu's myrmidons. After enduring this humiliation for an hour or so, he was let ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... duty, where no one can tamper with them. Even so, she may have her nerves preyed upon by eerie tinklings, impossible to locate in the darkness; these are caused by two knives, hung from a nail fixed high up in the rafters. By jiggling a string, which is conducted over another rafter and down the wall to his pillow, the patient makes the knifeblades clash. Sometimes two strings, leading to different beds, complete this instrument of torture. After a determined search, nurse finds one string, and, ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... said that Glover's voice would carry in a mountain storm from side to side of the Medicine Bend yard. That night the very last rafter in the Wickiup gables rang with his cry. He called only once, for O'Neill came bounding up the long stairs three steps at ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... June 28th was attached to a rafter of the front verandah of a bungalow at Lahore. The owner of the house stated that the swallows in question had already reared one brood that year, and that the birds in question had nested in his verandah for some years. There is ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... little woman, her soft white curls in disorder and the pink color rising from her cheeks to her fair forehead, as she bent to help Joe drag the box beneath the rafter's edge. ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... mid-afternoon found us in the thick of a whirling storm, the grip of the cold relaxed, the woods abloom with the clinging snow. But the crop was nearly in. High and higher rose the cold blue cakes within the ice-house doors until they touched the rafter plate. ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... linger after— No whispering ghost remain, In wall, or beam, or rafter, Of any hate or pain: Cleanse and call home thy spirit, Deny her leave to cast, On aught thy heirs inherit, The shadow ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... here. These tapestries, well preserved in those parts where light has scarcely penetrated, are framed in bands of oak now black as ebony. The ceiling has projecting rafters enriched with foliage which is varied for each rafter; the space between them is filled with planks painted blue, on which twine garlands of golden flowers. Two old buffers face each other; on their shelves, rubbed with Breton persistency by Mariotte the cook, can be seen, as in the days when ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... cellar, directly east of Lydia's bedroom and beneath Nita's. The wire whose course they were following led under the top frame of the door, and, with a flashlight in his hand, Dundee showed how it continued along a rafter until it reached the place where it was joined, by adhesive tape, to the wire Sprague had dropped from ...
— Murder at Bridge • Anne Austin
... and the barn and eave swallows are masons. The robin moulds an inner layer of mud in his round nest and covers it with fine grasses. The phoebe uses a mixture of mud and moss in plastering his large nest on some beam or rafter. ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... in dread of the power, abhorred by the gods of high heaven, The ruinous curse of the home till roof-tree and rafter be riven! Too true are the visions of ill, too true the fulfilment they bring To the curse that was spoken of old by the frenzy and wrath of the king! Her will is the doom of the children, and Discord is kindled amain, And strange is the Lord of Division, who cleaveth ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus
... women with it before. Do you despise her and those others for the predominance of the primal instinct, the sacred passion for the inviolate hearth? Not so much they yearned for the man as for the roof-tree, whose roots are twined about the heart-strings of the natural woman, the spreading rafter-branches of which shelter ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Beside this rather dismal, rather effeminate man, who recoiled from a worm, who grew giddy on the castle wall, who bore so helplessly the weight of his misfortunes, she felt herself a head and shoulders taller in cheerful and sterling courage. She could walk head in air along the most precarious rafter; her hand feared neither the grossness nor the harshness of life's web, but was thrust cheerfully, if need were, into the briar bush, and could take hold of any crawling horror. Ruin was mining the walls of her cottage, as already it had mined and subverted Mr. Archer's ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... delay she went, As her strong passion did her rashly guide, And those bright arms, down from the rafter hent, Within her closet did she closely hide; That might she do unseen, for she had sent The rest, on sleeveless errands from her side, And night her stealths brought to their wished end, Night, patroness of ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... never left the pole for a minute; but suppose, Ike, Barry has tipped off 'Cam' that all the boys will let go their fliers, and most of them will take one on the short side over to-night for a superstition drop at the opening; and suppose 'Cam' has told him to take them all into camp and give her a rafter-scraper at the opening, where would old Friday, 13th, land on to-morrow's dope-sheets? Bring up the average, wouldn't it, for five years to come? I tell you, Ike, she's too deep for me this run, and I'm goin' to let her alone and pay for the turkey out of ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... hid his precious pill under a rafter, lest anyone should steal it, and then began ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... Scotland. After one of his defeats he was lying one night on a wretched bed in a rude hut, while debating in his own mind whether it were not best to enlist in a crusade, when his attention was directed to a spider on the rafters overhead. He saw that the little spinner was trying to swing from one rafter to another, so as to fix his thread across the space. Time and again it tried and failed. Admiring the perseverance of the creature, Bruce began to count the number of times he tried. One, two, three, four, ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... "Charlie," thinking he might be somewhere near. Meanwhile I continued my search. I noticed some terrapin shells lying on a platform in one of the houses, the breast shell pierced with two holes. "Wear them at Green Corn Dance," said "Billy." I caught sight of some dressed buckskins lying on a rafter of a house, and an old fashioned rifle, with powder horn and shot flask. I also saw a hoe; a deep iron pot; a mortar, made from a live oak (?) log, probably fifteen inches in diameter and twenty-four in height, and beside it a pestle, made from ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... live on Christian ground, They and their houses shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes.' They scarce had spoke when fair and soft The roof began to mount aloft, Aloft rose every beam and rafter, The heavy wall climb'd slowly after; The chimney widen'd and grew higher. Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fasten'd to a joist; Doom'd ever in suspense to dwell, 'Tis now no kettle, but a bell. A wooden jack which had almost Lost ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... side to the very floor, and there was a little window in it, from which I could see away to the manse, a mile off, and far beyond it. Her bed stood in one corner, with a check curtain hung from a rafter in front of it. In another was a chest, which contained all their spare clothes, including Turkey's best garments, which he went home to put on every Sunday morning. In the little grate smouldered a fire of oak-bark, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... on this creature when another prolonged shock of earthquake came. It was not a bump like the previous one, but a severe vibration which only served to shake the men in their chairs, but it shook the small monkey off the rafter, and the miserable little thing fell with a shriek and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... of Murom, at their invitation, turned to go into the palace, little anticipating the danger that awaited him, for the eldest daughter had drawn up by a chain a huge rafter to let fall and slay Iliya as he rode through the gate. But Iliya perceived her design, and slew her with his lance. Thereupon he rode on toward Kiev, and going straight to the palace, prayed to God and saluted the nobles. And the Prince of Kiev said to Iliya, "Tell ...
— The Russian Garland - being Russian Falk Tales • Various
... quickly followed her advice, and no sooner were they concealed than the old giant Hymir came in. When his wife told him that visitors had come, he frowned so portentously, and flashed such a wrathful look towards their hiding-place, that the rafter split and the kettles fell with a crash, and, except the largest, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... long, low room; and the traders sitting on the benches against the walls, or standing aimlessly about, were talking in suppressed tones. Scotchmen, driven from their farms by the Bois-Brules, hung around in anxious groups. The lanterns, suspended on iron hooks from mid-rafter, gave but a dusky light, and I vainly scanned many faces for Eric Hamilton. That he was wounded, I knew. I was stealing stealthily towards the stretcher at the far end of the place, when a deep voice burred rough salutation in ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... fortune sprang full rife; When, slap, the savage made him feel His talons, newly arm'd with steel, By perching on his nasal member, As if it had been senseless timber. Outshriek'd the wight; but peals of laughter, Which threaten'd ceiling, roof, and rafter, From courtier, page, and monarch broke: Who had not laugh'd at such a joke? From me, so prone am I to such a sin, An empire had not held me in. I dare not say, that, had the pope been there, He would have join'd the laugh sonorous; But sad the king, I hold, who should not dare To lead, ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... against the boards in an outhouse, and therefore must have her nest spoiled whenever that implement was wanted; and what is stranger still, another bird of the same species built its nest on the wings and body of an owl that happened by accident to hang dead and dry from the rafter of a barn. This owl, with the nest on its wings, and with eggs in the nest, was brought as a curiosity worthy of the most elegant ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... Puck cried from a rafter overhead. 'See what it is to be beautiful! Sir Harry Dawe—pardon, Hal—says I am the very image of a head for ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... finished his porridge, he was to go into the barn to thrash. He took one of the rafters from the roof and made a flail out of it, and when the roof was about to fall in, he took a big pine tree with branches and all and put it up instead of the rafter. So he went on thrashing the grain and the straw and the hay all together. This was doing more damage than good, for the corn and the chaff flew about together, and a cloud of dust ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various
... paper makes an excellent substitute. Fig. 37 shows the framework of a Pontiac with a ridge-pole, but the ridge-pole is not necessary and the shack may be built without it, as shown in Figs. 36 and 39, where the rafter poles rest upon the two side-plates over which they project to form the apex of the roof. In Fig. 39, although the side-plates are drawn, the rafter or roof poles are not because the diagram is supposed to be a sort ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... estate. Single-handed, and supported, not by outward sympathy, but by inward force, it has built at least one great wing of the many-mansioned home which man in his totality demands. And if rough walls and protruding rafter-ends indicate that on one side the edifice is still incomplete, it is only by wise combination of the parts required, with those already irrevocably built, that we can hope for completeness. There is no necessary incongruity between what has been accomplished ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... elsewhere—generation after generation of the same name and line had inhabited it until now. Aunt Faith, exultingly, told each curious visitor that it had been built precisely two hundred and ten years. Out in the back kitchen, or lean-to, was hung to a rafter the identical gun with which the "old settler" had ranged the forest that stretched then from the very door; and higher up, across a frame contrived for it, was the "wooden saddle" fabricated for the back of the placid, slow-moving ox, in the time when horses were as yet rare in the new country, ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... crown'd me, And the Muse shared my hours of leisure, pure and free. In those so joyous nights, lighted with friendly glee, How rang that dear abode with rhyme and merry laughter— Waking the household gods—how rang each shouting rafter! Then, weary of the feast, I from the wine-cup turn'd, For a new sudden fire within my bosom burn'd, And to my lady's bower I flew upon the morrow, And found her half in wrath and half in girlish sorrow, And with fond threats, and tears bedimming ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... the thirty-eighth year of his age, he—somewhat world-weary, and with more scars on his heart than he cared to discover—retired to his chateau, he placed his library "in the great tower overlooking the entrance to the court," and over the central rafter he inscribed in large letters the device—"I DO NOT UNDERSTAND; I PAUSE; I EXAMINE." When he began to write his Essays he had no great desire to shine as an author; he wrote simply to relieve teeming heart and brain. The best method to lay the spectres of the mind is to commit them to paper. ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... wipe his mustach en study. He 'low ter hisse'f, 'De pot rack know what gwine up de chimbley, de rafters know who's in de loft, de bed-cord know who und' de bed. I ain't no pot-rack, I ain't no rafter, en I ain't no bed-cord, but, please gracious! I'm gwine ter fin' who's in dat house, en I ain't gwine in dar nudder. Dey mo' ways ter fin' out who fell in de mill-pond widout ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... Jack to the next blank, "I got it from him." And when Bill gets his paper back finally—which is often only after much bush grumbling, accusation, recrimination, and denial—he severely and carefully re-arranges theme pages, folds the paper, and sticks it away up over a rafter, or behind a post or batten, or under his pillow where it will safe. He wants that ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... without, We sat the clean-winged hearth about, Content to let the north wind roar In baffled rage at pane and door, While the red logs before us beat The frost line back with tropic heat; And ever, when a louder blast Shook beam and rafter as it passed, The merrier up its roaring draft The great ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... mighty man of war. But for all their mighty shaping, and the struggle and the strain Of their hands, the deft in labour, they tugged thereat in vain; And still as the shouting and jeers, and the names of men and the laughter Beat backward from gable to gable, and rattled o'er roof-tree and rafter, Moody and still sat Siggeir; for he said: "They have trained me here As a mock for their woodland bondsmen; and yet ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris
... It's only that I don't wish to disturb the wedding feast, or I'd take this rope here (takes hold of the rope on the straw) and throw it across that rafter there. Then I'd make a noose and stretch it out, and I'd climb on to that rafter and jump down with my head in the noose! That's what my ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... which I possess, I have that same self-satisfaction and lack of sympathy which I loathe in others. It is my life which is the stumbling-block to my message. They have often far less light than I have, but walk in it more simply than I do. The rafter in my own eye troubles me even more than the speck in theirs. But it is hard, God knows, sometimes to feel His presence in their presence. But the forces of good must be united ('Keep, ah! keep them combined. Else . . .'), and if by any effort ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... of God!" thundered Mr. Shorto-Champernowne, with tones so resonant that they woke rafter echoes the organ itself had never roused. "Silence, and cease this sacrilegious brawling, or the consequences will be unutterably serious! Let those involved," he concluded more calmly, "appear before me in the vestry after divine service is at ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... dents on the edge, sir, At Bronkhurst Spruit they were done; I was getting a door for a fire, For out of wood we had run. I was smiting hard at the door, sir, Or rafter, I'm not sure which, When I struck on an iron screw, sir, And the bay'nit got ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... labourer, is the poet alike of all the sons of industry. The mechanic who inhabits a smoky atmosphere, and in whose ear an unwholesome din from workshop and thoroughfare rings hourly, hangs from his rafter the caged linnet; and the strain that should gush free from blossomed or green bough, that should mix in the murmur of the brook, mixes in and consoles the perpetual noise of the loom or the forge. Thus Burns sings more especially to those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... till Christmas. The active work was finished by about seven o'clock. Dinner was now got ready. It consisted of two bowls of broth, then boiled dumplings, and lastly some stewed giblets. Having made things tidy, our friends now tied on woollen hoods, and each taking down from the rafter-hooks a capacious basket, they went forth to ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... ceiling, which was fringed with the heads of the ostlers and stable boys who were looking down from the harness-room above. A carriage- lamp was slung in each corner, and a very large stable-lantern hung from a rafter in the centre. A coil of rope had been brought in, and under the direction of Jackson four men had been ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... seeing a tourist reach up and pull off the little tuft of breath feathers from the mid-rafter of the little house he had rented for the night. Naturally he replaced it when the enormity of his act was ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... this good house, in frame or fixture, Been tempered by the least admixture Of that discreditable shoddy, Should we to-day compound our toddy, Or gaily marry song and laughter Below its sempiternal rafter? ...
— Moral Emblems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of Christ! Take care, brother, how you speak of another's fault. Ere you know, you may be in the same or deeper condemnation. Very significantly does the Master say that the man that sees a mote in his brother's eye, usually has a rafter in his own eye! One of the two unpardonable sins of the ...
— Days of Heaven Upon Earth • Rev. A. B. Simpson
... in a rafter hung a rusty tin lantern, through the patterned holes of which a single candle had once sprinkled with light the progress of the farmer's evening chores. That, too, had belonged to the early time, and from a dim corner I drew another ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... out his hand to reach them, expecting every moment to feel the fangs in his wrist. But he found the match-box, struck a light, carefully examined the floor as far as he could see it, jumped out of bed at one bound, and took refuge in the other room. There he looked in every corner, and along every rafter for the other snake, for he knew that at this season snakes are often found in pairs, but he could not see the mate of the one ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... forget himself and have a part of his hand chopped off. There were the "hoisters," as they were called, whose task it was to press the lever which lifted the dead cattle off the floor. They ran along upon a rafter, peering down through the damp and the steam; and as old Durham's architects had not built the killing room for the convenience of the hoisters, at every few feet they would have to stoop under a beam, say four feet above the one they ran on; which got them into the habit of stooping, so that ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... "Two Seas"—"Baherein." It is one hundred feet in length, and twenty feet high, with walls four feet thick, neatly plastered over with mud mortar. The great door is a marvel of carving-work for Unyanyembe artisans. Each rafter within is also carved with fine designs. Before the front of the house is a young plantation of pomegranate trees, which flourish here as if they were indigenous to the soil. A shadoof, such as may be seen on the Nile, serves to draw water ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... song and laughter, The cheeks of Christmas glow red and jolly, And sprouting is every corbel[22] and rafter With the lightsome green of ivy and holly; Through the deep gulf[23] of the chimney wide 215 Wallows the Yule-log's[24] roaring tide; The broad flame-pennons droop and flap And belly and tug as a flag in the wind; Like a ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... horn, As he lies on the straw by the snoring boy, The winding echo of "N-a-n-j-e-m-o-y." All day it follows, all night it whines, From the suck of waters, the moan of pines, And the tread of cavalry following after, The flash of flames on beam and rafter, The shot, the strangle, the crash, the swoon, Scarce break his trance or disturb the croon Of the meaningless notes on his lips which fasten, And the soldier hears, as he seeks to convoy The dying words of the dark assassin, A wandering ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... distressed, and presently, the air clearing a little, a huge rent in the roof was disclosed. On the ground behind lay piles upon piles of rubbish and broken tiles, and perilously near our heads a huge rafter sagged downwards, half split in two. We were debating how long we could stand under such circumstances, when a second shock shook the building, and once more we were deluged with dust and dirt. This time the hanging rafter ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... their village shall be drown'd; Whilst you shall see your cottage rise, And grow a church before your eyes." Scarce had they spoke, when fair and soft, The roof began to mount aloft; Aloft rose ev'ry beam and rafter; The heavy wall went clambering after. The chimney widen'd, and grew higher, Became a steeple with a spire. The kettle to the top was hoist, And there stood fastened to a joist, But with the upside down, to show Its inclination for below: In vain; for a superior force ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... plentiful. During our first winter, we had a deer hung on every rafter on the north side of the house. Our supply of meat for the first year or two depended upon our success as hunters ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... none was to be had. What then was to be done? He resolved to get rid of life by some process; and the next that occurred to him was hanging. In a solemn spirit he prepared a selvage, and suspended himself from the rafter of his workshop; but here another disappintment awaited him—he would not hang. Such was his want of gravity, that his own weight proved insufficient to occasion his death by mere suspension. His third attempt was at drowning, but he was too light to sink; all the elements,—all his own energies ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... America. Sir,—The members of the Traders' Association, Gloucester, England, ask your acceptance of a bound copy of their guide to this ancient and historic City, together with this box made from part of a rafter taken from the room in which Bishop Hooper was lodged the night before his burning, and from oak formerly in old All Saints' Church, as souvenirs of the regard which the association entertains for you and its recognition of your ardent affection for the City of Gloucester, the honored ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... empty space. He was on the lip of the front trench. The sound was now a yard to his right, and with infinite care he shifted his position. Now the bell was just below him, and he felt the big rafter of the woodwork from which it had fallen. He felt something else—a stretch of wire fixed in the ground with the far end hanging in the void. That would be the spy's explanation if anyone heard the sound and ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... rocky heights—which are called here, in the language of the country "Diablerets" close to a rapid mountain stream, which was of a greyish white, like bubbling soap suds. A smaller stream, rushes forth from the rocks on the other side of the river, passes through an enclosed, broad rafter-made-gutter and turns the large wheel of the mill. The gutter was so full of water, that it streamed over and offered a most slippery way, to one who had the idea of crossing more quickly to the mill; a young man ...
— The Ice-Maiden: and Other Tales. • Hans Christian Andersen
... your eye on BIRRELL, So wholly free from guile, Conspicuous by his absence From Erin's peaceful isle; Who wakes from floor to rafter The House to heedless laughter, Careless of what comes after Can he ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... the poet's pens and throwing his ink into the fire, she bought the best pens and the best ink. She even supplied him with a comfortable desk, on which he might write his verses. "Courage, courage!" she would say. "Each verse that you write is another tile to the roof and a rafter to the dwelling; ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... in with all his might, still farther and farther, with effort, as men bore with an auger, till the scalded blood gushed out, and the eye-ball smoked, and the strings of the eye cracked, as the burning rafter broke in it, and the eye hissed, as hot iron hisses when it ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... now entered extended across the entire east end of the building, and had windows upon three sides. These were heavily curtained. The apartment was lighted by a small cresset hanging from a rafter near ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... other, and then in consternation upon the burning building, every window of which was belching flame, while the sound of some falling rafter, or the explosion of some combustible substance, was continually heard! To venture into that blazing house, with its sinking roof and falling rafters, seemed ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... gone. The stable burned to the ground, while the crowd cheered at every falling rafter, and the volunteer fire department sprayed it with a garden hose. And in the house Alex and Halsey searched every corner of the lower floor, finding ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... bitterness, or evil speaking, or ill will—all of them variants of the basic ill, unlove. And that, says the Lord Jesus, is far, far worse than the tiny wrong (sometimes quite unconscious) that provoked it. A mote means in the Greek a little splinter, whereas a beam means a rafter. And the Lord Jesus means by this comparison to tell us that our unloving reaction to the other's wrong is what a great rafter is to a little splinter! Every time we point one of our fingers at another and say, "It's your fault," three of our fingers are pointing back at us. God ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... kitchens, in which the clerk of the kitchen, the pantlers, and the yeomen of the cellar and ewery, were hurrying to and fro. Above the screen was a gallery, occupied by the trumpeters and minstrels; and over all was a noble rafter roof. The tables were profusely spread, and glittered with silver dishes of extraordinary size and splendour, as well as with flagons and goblets of the same material, and rare design. The guests, all of whom were assembled, were outnumbered by the prodigious array ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and pile up just beyond the edge of the ice-foot outside us. A few minutes later the whole mass broke with a rabid roar into a tumbling chaos of ice blocks, some upheaving, some going under, and a big rafter, thirty feet high, formed at the edge of the ice-foot within twenty feet of the ship. The invading mass grew larger and larger and steadily advanced toward us. The grounded piece off our starboard ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... suitors in your own house and home? Come, stand by me, and see if Mentor forgets old friendship." Yet she left the victory still uncertain, that she might prove his courage to the full. She turned herself into a swallow and flew up into the roof and perched on a blackened rafter overhead. ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... quite evening, and whereabouts I was to get down I couldn't tell. I dare not stop though, for fear the others should come to look after their mate, so unfastening the rope from my waist I tied it to a rafter, slid down as far as it would reach, and hung swinging at the end, thinking that it was all no good, for you two would be gone; and then I dropped, and found myself ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... all day with solemn laughter From wide-mouthed chimney-places, And the strange noises between roof and rafter, The wainscot clamor, and ...
— Poems • William D. Howells |
